Starting up this blog again!

I had set this blog aside for a while as my involvement in politics waned. Of course last year (2016) I got re-energized in campaigning for Bernie Sanders.  I was considering adding to this blog some more, but never got around to it.

After the aftermath of the primary election essentially stolen from Sanders, and the embarrassing loss of Clinton in a race between the two most unliked candidates in history, and with a unthinkable Trump presidency about to start, I decided to dig in — again.  To run for delegate to the California Democratic Party.  I had been delegate for three 2-year terms before (2005-2010), and so I figured it was time to try it again. I and the progressives I worked with had quite a bit of success last time, so it's time to do it again.

Like you I’m devastated that Trump will be President soon, but I’m furious that the leadership of the Democratic Party (like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) seem to be waving the white flag, denying that the party needs a new direction. They want to keep the same losing strategy, sucking up to corporate donors and denying the progressive values that most Americans actually hold dear.  In order to change the Democratic Party, we need new leadership — like Keith Ellison, running to head the DNC, and Kimberly Ellis, running to head the party in California — but that’s not enough. As Bernie said, change always happens from the bottom up, so we need a groundswell of real progressives like me to be the change we want to see.

There are 14 spots open for delegates to the CDP in our Assembly District 18 (Alameda, most of Oakland, and San Leandro). But many candidates are part of the political establishment who don’t want to rock the boat.  So I have teamed up with an amazing, diverse slate of progressive men and women from our district — you might recognize some of them as being active in the Sanders and Clinton campaigns — and I need you to come out and vote for me and our entire group, so that we can remake the Democratic Party into a party that succeeds in representing our progressive values. The people in our slate have some amazing skills and I’m hoping that my experience being a delegate will be helpful in turning their values and ideas into action.

We call ourselves the “Groundswell Progressives.”  We have a website with information about our values and the people on our slate: www.groundswellprogressives.us.

To be eligible to vote for me and the Groundswell Progressives slate, you need to be either already registered to vote as a Democrat — or you can actually register/re-register to vote, as a Democrat, there.  (Note: If you want to support me but don’t feel like a Democrat at heart, you could always take an extra registration form and re-register with a different party preference after the event. I won’t tell.)

We in the grassroots are up against a well-funded establishment political campaign to install a set of “business as usual” candidates, and they are well-versed at bringing out big numbers. So this is something where we really need as many real people to get active as possible to counter that “machine.” I’ve been on a team that has succeeded at that three times before, and I need you to make this work again.